ICE Arrests NYC Employee, While Funding for Empire Doesn't Miss a Beat
While NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams rightly expresses 'outrage' over the arrest of an employee who holds a valid work permit, the larger conversation about who gets to stay and who gets deported remains notably absent from mainstream discourse. The spectacle of ICE agents apprehending a city worker (on a Tuesday, no less) is framed as a shocking breach of municipal sanctuary policies. Yet,
the national apparatus that funds raids and detentions continues unabated. For instance, in 2023 alone, Congress approved over $25 billion for CBP and ICE, while simultaneously funneling billions more in military aid to overseas allies, often without the same domestic 'legal permission' debate. (See Congressional Appropriations, FY2023). It appears the 'rule of law' is highly selective. We have
politicians tripping over themselves to denounce an ICE arrest of a city employee, while those same politicians routinely vote to send billions to governments whose actions—often against civilians—would make ICE's morning activities look like child's play. One might ask if the 'outrage' is truly about human dignity, or merely about inconvenient optics for local politicians. The system that creates
undocumented workers and then hunts them down is the same one that prioritizes foreign military aid over domestic social safety nets. Some 'sanctuary city' it is, when the federal hand can reach in and grab whoever it pleases, while other hands freely grab billions in taxpayer dollars for objectives far from home. A tale of two enforcements, perhaps?